829 Kate Kordsmeier: Success with Soul

Kate Kordsmeier:

We have completely different hormone cycles and a man’s resets every 24 hours. Their hormones are doing the exact same thing at the same time every single day. Whereas women, we have these four phases and essentially each one lasts for a week. And so I think most women could relate to saying, “Oh yeah, the week before my period I often get maybe a little PMS-y,” or “While I’m on my period, I’m really tired and I just don’t have a lot of energy. I don’t want to work out. I don’t have a lot of focus to do things.”

I think even just becoming aware of that, women give themselves so much more grace for different phases, whereas before they would beat themselves up and power through and call themselves lazy or just the way that they talk to themselves was so mean and harmful.

How much would it change your work life if you could align your productivity to your hormonal cycles without guilt or apology? Success with Soul CEO Kate Kordsmeier helps female founders get into flow – to know when to focus more on inward reflection, analysis and planning – and when to go into massive action. Today we talk about how to best leverage our true feminine energy to succeed in business.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of Podopolo, the AI-powered interactive app revolutionizing podcast discovery and discussion and making podcasting profitable for creators. I’d like to invite you to take a minute, download Podopolo from either app store, listen to the rest of this episode there, and join the conversation with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice … Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet a journalist turned inspiring entrepreneur who built and sold a 6-figure blog before building a prospering coaching business.

Kate Kordsmeier is the founder and CEO of Success with Soul, a coaching incubator program that helps female founders align with their feminine energy and cycles to grow businesses without burnout.

Kate will be here in a moment, and first,

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We talk a lot on this podcast about why the very masculine “hustle and grind” blueprint for business doesn’t work as well for women. Sure, there are times and seasons for massive action, just not all the time. And it’s true for male entrepreneurs as well that we all need contemplative quiet times to work on our business alongside all the ways and times we need to be “in it” but today we get into why masculine and feminine energy cycles are different and how to align your activities to your hormones – that’s right, your hormones.

If you’ve ever experienced burnout building your business – and you know you have – listen on, because Kate Kordsmeier shares how you can grow your business faster without all that hustle and grind.

Kate is the founder and CEO of the business coaching incubator Success with Soul, and we talk about how to understand and leverage cyclical hormone patterns and your feminine energy to create work systems for yourself that keep you healthy and happy as you grow and scale your business. Plus we talk about the secrets of surrender, and why going “social media free” can boost your business.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Kate Kordsmeier and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Kate, welcome to Wings.

Kate Kordsmeier:

Thanks for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love that your business is named Success with Soul because really, at the end of the day, our soul, our mindset really sets the course for whether we succeed or how much we succeed or whether we fail as entrepreneurs. And I know that you leverage the concept of feminine energy into your business and all the work you do for your clients. Tell me more about that.

Kate Kordsmeier:

Yeah, well obviously I totally agree and I think so much of what people don’t think about is how it feels. And so that’s been a huge focus of mine always, is just for myself and for my clients. Success with Soul for me is very much about feeling good while doing the work that I want to do. So I think a lot of people put the emphasis on more of the external validation and vanity metrics. Obviously a business has to make money, revenue is important, but sometimes we stop there and you think, “Oh, if I was just making more money, everything would be better. All my problems would be solved, I’d feel amazing.” And that’s not always the case.

So really thinking about how it feels has been a huge part of my own journey and what I help my clients with. And one of the ways that we do that is by really leaning into our feminine energy and looking at really syncing actually our schedules with our menstrual cycles, with the phases of the moon, with whatever’s happening in the universe and the cosmos and all of that kind of stuff so that we are able to get more done in less time and feel good while doing it.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s so beautiful and in a way when I hear you say it, so obvious and yet it’s not. I see so many women fitting themselves into a very masculine structure of business. We’re relative newcomers to it historically. And so what happens when women go into entrepreneurship, taught by all these gurus of entrepreneurship about the hustle and grind and this and that and all that kind of stuff. What happens to your clients and women generally in entrepreneurship when they take that path?

Kate Kordsmeier:

Honestly, I think this happens whether you are a man or a woman, but certainly women who are, as you said, newer to the business world, relatively speaking. And we’re juggling a lot more roles and responsibilities than most men are typically and of course we have been socially conditioned as women to put others first and to not trust ourselves and just indoctrinated into this patriarchal hustle culture. And I think what that creates and what I see happening, again with men and women, is just burnout and stress and overwhelm and frustration.

And like I said, even if it’s technically “working” as in, “Oh, I’m making the money” or “I feel successful,” you don’t feel great and that you feel run down and depleted and just stressed all the time and it’s not enjoyable. So figuring out that there is another way to work, that does work for women’s bodies, for our needs, for the standard juggling act that most of us are performing all the time of managing a household and a business. And a lot of us are moms and we’re still oftentimes the primary caregiver for our children. It’s a lot. So figuring out a way to work that actually works for us, that I feel like is my purpose on this planet.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love that. So let’s get into these cyclical patterns and how you mentioned menstrual cycles, but there’s so much more as well. It’s almost like seasons. So when should you be in real driving activity, when should you be in contemplation, these sorts of things. Break all that down for me.

Kate Kordsmeier:

When I first learned this, I was just first of all blown away that how everything magically mirrors itself and the moon and our menstrual cycles and things like that, just the science of it was just so mind-blowing. And then I was also mind-blown that I was in my late twenties and I didn’t even know that I had four different phases of my menstrual cycle. I thought I’m either bleeding or I’m not bleeding, except I didn’t know anything else. And so if you’re sitting here thinking the same thing, you’re not alone. This is not something that we’re taught in school.

It’s not something that is prioritized, but there is magic to it. And what is really cool is that there are four phases of the menstrual cycle. So you have your menstruation period, which is when you’re on your period. And then after that you go into your follicular phase, which kind of mirrors springtime energy, if you think about energy is starting to increase and your hormones are rising from their lowest levels during menstruation. So that’s why your energy is increasing. Your mood is in improving. You might have an openness to new things and you’re feeling more creative and beginnings are happening. And so that’s very springtime energy. It also magically mirrors the waxing phase of the moon, which is when the moon is going from being where we can’t see it, which is called the new moon, to growing to a full moon.

All of these things literally line up to the day, which is just so insane to me. And so when you learn these different seasons, and I’ll go over some of the other phases, but just to stop here for a minute, is just when you learn how these things work together and what’s happening in your body, in the universe, why you might feel the way that you do, and you can start syncing your schedule so that you’re doing certain tasks or not doing certain things during the different phases, everything just becomes so much easier and you stop paddling upstream.

Melinda Wittstock:

This is so interesting, because I think a lot of people, men and women, get stuck in the to-do list, where they’re just ticking things off. And of course your list is never done, so that ends up being dispiriting. But you can be so much working in the business that you’re not really working on it and then your energy is not great, so you’re not getting great results and it just becomes really defeating. So how do you counsel your clients to get into this? Of course when we’re happy, we’re more likely to attract the results that we want. So talk to me through the specific process of how you get your clients into this new modality and what are some of the results you start seeing in their businesses?

Kate Kordsmeier:

Yeah, such a good question and it’s such a good point that you made too in the beginning of that, which is men and women, we have completely different hormone cycles and a man’s resets every 24 hours. So more or less, their hormones are doing the exact same thing at the same time every single day. Every day is more or less the same. And of course there’s outside influences and things that can happen to make it not so, but generally speaking, they’re going through the same cycle of hormones rising and falling at different times of the day every single day. Whereas women, like I said, we have these four phases and essentially each one lasts for a week. And so I think most women could relate to saying, “Oh yeah, the week before my period I often get maybe a little PMS-y,” or “While I’m on my period, I’m really tired and I just don’t have a lot of energy. I don’t want to work out. I don’t have a lot of focus to do things.”

So all of those things, I think even just becoming aware of that, it’s amazing what that can do, like you said, for your spirit and not feeling so defeated. Because I think what I see happen most is that women give themselves so much more grace for different phases, whereas before they would beat themselves up and power through and call themselves lazy or just the way that they talk to themselves was so mean and harmful. And once they realized oh, I feel this way because this is what’s happening in my body right now, this makes perfect sense. What if I allowed myself to rest during this period?

Or what if I prioritize tasks during my menstrual cycle, for example, where I could schedule time for more things that are more like analysis and reflection and planning, things where you are just more in that inward phase and prioritize tasks that are a little bit more dreamy, maybe they don’t require lots of energy. And then when they come back once their hormones start rising again, then they actually have so much more energy because they allowed themselves that space that they’re able to knock things off their to-do list so much faster than they were before when they were just trying to hustle through every single day.

Melinda Wittstock:

One of the things that I think is tricky though too is this whole concept that a lot of women have that we hear repeated all the time, “A woman’s work is never done,” just that phrase. It’s so deeply embedded in our subconscious. And you mentioned earlier how we get very overextended because we’re putting other people ahead of ourselves doing all these things. We’re trying to be 20 people in one, putting ourselves last.

I find that the business concept of leverage gets overlooked by a lot of women, that we think we have to do everything ourselves rather than being able to delegate or ask for help, let alone receive help. How do you help women through that whole equation? Because it’s one thing to make sure that you’re doing all the work at the right time and having those gaps where you’re resting or contemplating or thinking, and then other times when you’re really hard at work, but isn’t part of the answer also just being able to let go and that you don’t have to grow a business, you do not have to be doing it all yourself.

Kate Kordsmeier:

I think that’s such a good point. And we talk a lot about surrender and how actually one of the pieces of advice my dad gave me a many years ago, and I just felt like I was banging my head against the wall trying to get something to work, and I’m like, “I’ve tried this, I’ve tried that, I’ve tried everything.” And he said, “Have you tried not trying?” And it was just my whole brain exploded of just like, oh my gosh, what if I tried not trying? And then of course, what do you know? As soon as I just surrendered and let go, things started falling into place. And so I do think that we have been conditioned to, like you said, to overextend ourselves to try to be everything to everyone and to just keep working and pushing and hustling at the expense of ourselves.

One of the things that I see happen when women start embracing this cyclical living is that, like I said, they have more grace for themselves, which means that oftentimes their self-esteem and their self-worth goes up. And when that happens, they feel more worthy of asking for help. They feel more worthy of getting the support that they really need. Whereas before when they were just telling themselves, “Oh, I’m such a piece of crap, I should be able to do this, I’m so behind,” whatever the negative self-talk is, they were never going to ask for help because we’re already conditioned not to, and they didn’t feel like they deserved it.

Melinda Wittstock:

This is the difficulty of receiving, but I love this whole concept of surrender. But it’s so hard to do that because we’re wrapped up in our egos and all the things we think we should do.. Do you think that when we’re actually in, I like to use the phrase feminine power, that more intuitive, collaborative place where we’re really leaning into that and leveraging that. We’re actually formidable in business in a way that I see men sort of increasingly trying to leverage some of those “feminine soft skills.” We have the power to actually reinvent business, do you think?

Kate Kordsmeier:

100%. I think we have the power to do anything. And I always say, because I think a lot of people hear this and they think like, “Oh, you just hate men,” or “You just want there to be a matriarchy.” And it’s like no, I’m not trying to dismantle the patriarchy to create a matriarchy. We’re trying to balance, it’s more about equality and then balancing those feminine and masculine energies because both are good. But if you are all the way one way, that’s where problems can arise on both ends of the spectrum.

So I think a lot of us are just socialized, our entire, especially American, culture is efficiency and productivity above everything else. And so what happens is we all start operating more in that masculine energy to the point of burnout. And when we can actually see the value in leaning more into some of that feminine energy, which as you said, is all about intuition and creativity and collaboration and all of these skills that are incredibly important, that when we find that balance, that’s where I feel like the magic really starts to happen. It’s not to say you go all the way that way and you’re always just lying around dreaming about the next great thing. You still have to actually do stuff, but most of us are operating in 100% masculine energy where all we’re doing is doing, and it would be beneficial to everyone if there was a little bit more being.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, 100% agree. So for a man or a woman to be able to be in balance, or maybe integration is a better word, where you’re drawing on both the masculine and the feminine and consciously, right?

Kate Kordsmeier:

Right. Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

We’re actually aware. You’re in the present and you’re aware and you’re able to know which tools to leverage when. I think almost that’s the highest expression even of a human being in business or in any endeavor, but especially in entrepreneurship, where there’s just so many unknowns, there’s so many things you can’t control. I joke that if you want therapy, just become an entrepreneur because-

Kate Kordsmeier:

Oh, yeah. Crash course in personal development, and it’ll bring up all of your issues.

Melinda Wittstock:

100%. This is so true.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, exactly. Well, and this is a good thing actually. I think a lot of people are afraid. They paper over or suppress things, whereas if it comes to light, you can deal with it. It’s just like in business, the entrepreneur that’s afraid to look at their numbers, and so they don’t really know the story. They think, “Oh, if I ignore it, then it’s not a problem.” Same thing with personal growth. And so just on the business training side of things to getting people to not just six figures, but hopefully high six figures and beyond to seven figures, only 3% of female entrepreneurs get to a seven figure business. And so in that trajectory of how these things interplay between coaching actual business knowledge, everything from sales and marketing and all the things you have to do, to just actually just know your numbers, be able to figure out how to scale a business, all these sorts of things combined with this more internal personal development. Talk to me about your process and how you balance those things in how you coach women.

Kate Kordsmeier:

Yeah, I think it’s such an important, again, it is a balance. Success with Soul. We used to say it’s where soul meets strategy because you really do need both. And you can’t just have the soul piece just be in alignment and fully in living your values, but not actually have a strategy for how you’re running your business. But lately, we’ve actually changed that to say that soul is the strategy. Because I think that when you really are doing those things, that the strategy creates itself in a way.

So going back to your original question, I think that the way that we work with clients, I guess I’ll say, is that we have a lot of training that is on the strategy piece. And this is how could do SEO to grow your organic traffic and not have to be on social media. And this is how you can set up automated funnels and other kinds of systems in your business. But all of those are all to serve the soul of your business, which is yourself. And those strategies are created so that you do have the time to just be, and to not just always be doing. And so I think that for me, it’s creating strategies that serve you rather than just doing a strategy for strategy’s sake or because everybody else is doing it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, it’s so easy to copy other people rather than really actually step into your authentic self. Because this is the funny thing about courses and all these people who take courses, whether it’s like how to create a sales funnel or how to do way back in the day, how to do a webinar or how to do all these things, and there’s my template and you too can be like me. And it never quite works out that way. The people who are really successful, they find their own path somehow.

Kate Kordsmeier:

Right. You can’t carbon copy. I think all the swipe copy and templates, I think those can be incredibly helpful jumping off points. But when people are just taking them and literally copy pasting, it’s never going to work because nobody can do what you do the way you do it. And the same goes for that person who you got the template from. So use it as inspiration and to give yourself an idea of what’s possible. But yeah, you’ve got to create it for yourself. And that makes me think too, which I meant to say before, which is about, yes, you need the strategy, but what I’ve found and why I have a coaching program now is because just having the strategy alone isn’t enough.

You can get the strategy anywhere, but what happens when you get stuck or what happens when you start self-sabotaging or you have imposter syndrome or whatever mindset thing is coming up for you? And sometimes you’re not even conscious of it. When you can bring that into coaching and really work through it, I feel like that’s also where we see people get exponentially better results than if they just have the template.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yes. So true. So all this knowledge, Kate, tell me about your journey and how you, on your own entrepreneurial path, came to understand all of this to the point where you could help other people in the same journey.

Kate Kordsmeier:

I think I’ve always been somebody that really has just followed my intuition, even when people thought I was crazy to do it. And I’m now in my fourth business, I guess. I’ve been an entrepreneur since 2010, so 13 years now. And there’s been a lot of maybe reinvention, but I think it’s actually just more evolution that I tried one thing, it led me to something else, which brought me to a new place, and then I went on from there. So I started as a corporate copywriter for a Fortune 500 company, and I hated it. And I quit to become a freelance journalist, which is what I went to school for. And everybody thought I was insane. This was right after the 2008 recession and people were just like, “You’re lucky to have a job. What are you thinking? This is insanity.” I just felt like I was meant for more and I didn’t want to die in that cubicle.

So I started my freelance business, and from there, I did that for eight years. That was definitely the longest stint I had in any one thing. But I started from there and then I learned so much about storytelling and persuasion and just copywriting and how to really connect with people. So in 2015, I ended up starting a blog, and I really started it as a business decision. I remember at the time saying, “I’m not a blogger. This is just a piece of my freelance pie. I just do lots of different things. This is just one of the things that I do.” And the more I did it, the more I wanted to do it and didn’t want to be a journalist anymore. And so about a year in, I went full-time with the blog and was making over six figures with it. And then people started asking me, “How did you do this?”

So then I ended up creating a course called the Six Figure Blog Academy to teach people how to make money blogging. And then from there, I loved being in that teaching role, and so I wanted to go all in on my course business. And so I ended up selling my blog for multiple six figures, and I sold the blog. I went all in on my course business. And then quickly from there, I ended up seeing that again, people needed more than just the strategy. So I ended up getting certified as a life and success coach. And I have some other more energy healing modalities like Reiki and NLP and hypnotherapy and some things like that in my toolbox. And here we are today. I have a mastermind program that’s like the group coaching mastermind, and we’re about to actually launch a digital storefront. I think there is still a time and a place for just getting the template, getting started with something small, getting a quick win here and there, and then we have the bigger coaching for people who are ready to take it to the next level.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love hearing your story. Thank you for that. I am also a recovering journalist, and one of the things that was so interesting to me about journalism, I don’t know a lot of entrepreneurs who come into entrepreneurship through journalism, but one of the things that it certainly taught me for sure was you were always as good as your last story, right? So you were prospecting, you were always hunting, you were always curious. And it became really easy to talk to anybody, ask any question, get anybody you needed on the phone, and as you said about the persuading sources to talk to you, and then being able to write and just produce things quickly. So there were a number of things about journalism that was really great training for entrepreneurship in a lot of ways.

Kate Kordsmeier:

Oh yeah. I feel like I would not have had the fast success I had with some of my other entrepreneurial endeavors if it was not for the skills I learned as a journalist,

Melinda Wittstock:

Especially the really quick thing. I remember way back in the day, London Times’ media correspondent and a story would break, and I would literally have 15 minutes to make the front page with a 1200-word piece that heaven forbid there should be a typo in it. And at the time I’m in my early twenties and occasionally Rupert Murdoch would be standing right behind me as I was [inaudible 00:29:28]

Kate Kordsmeier:

No pressure.

Melinda Wittstock:

And having lived through that, nothing. And there’s all kinds of hair-raising moments across all of my five businesses so far. But yeah, if you can cope with that, you can cope with just about anything. But yeah, it was intense. And you learn speed and accuracy, and there are a whole bunch of things. On the downside of it though, what I’ve learned, and especially as an entrepreneur in tech, where it’s all really about the team and being able to manage engineers and designers and salespeople and this and that, and that kind of scalable business, the entrepreneurship was something I had to recover from in that sense, because it was such a lone sport. It wasn’t really about teamwork.

Kate Kordsmeier:

Well, I never had a team. The corporate job I had, I only worked for four months before I quit. And so I was freelance. Like I said, I mean, I’ve only been an entrepreneur my whole career. And then even as a journalist, it was just me writing, pitching editors and writing the stories. And it’s a pretty solitary, so when I started hiring a team, yes, that was a huge learning curve for me.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, me too. Yeah.

Kate Kordsmeier:

And I don’t think I gave myself enough grace with that also because I just felt like, “Oh, I should know how to do this,” and, “I’m a nice person. Why is this so hard?” And until I really realized I’ve never been on a team before. I don’t even have an example of a bad boss to know what not to do. So it’s definitely a learning curve and a transition in terms of okay, people are going to work for me now and I have to lead them.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s a really, really big transition. And especially earlier in the conversation, we were talking about how women have a hard time asking people to do things. And when you layer into this kind of perfectionism I think that a lot of us suffer from, that we really have to recover from as well. You have a lot of instances, a lot of women I’ve mentored, and I had to recover from this myself as well, this idea of like, “Oh, it’ll just be faster if I do it.”

Kate Kordsmeier:

Yep. I had so many learning moments with that thought.

Melinda Wittstock:

And you have to let it go or let go even how it’s going to get done.

Melinda Wittstock:

Someone else may have a completely different way of getting to the same result you want. And so does it really matter how it’s done as long as it’s done, as long as it’s in line with the ethics and company values and such?

Kate Kordsmeier:

And one of my mentors told me that I need to ask myself before I try to step in every time, what’s more important to me, control or freedom? And so that question helped me a lot when it was like I hired this team so that I would have more freedom, that I wouldn’t have to do everything myself, stop trying to control it to be exactly the way that I would do it. And who even says my way is the right way?

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. I have a similar phrase for that. You can be right or you can be rich.

Kate Kordsmeier:

My friend who’s a therapist says “You can be right or you can be happy.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, same thing, right? Because I think I just went for the alliteration. So the journalistic there. But yeah, it’s true because when we’re in control or we have to be right, that’s really the ego. And so if we’re surrendering-

Kate Kordsmeier:

Yes, that.

Melinda Wittstock:

And we can really enable our team then to grow because what people really want to work for a micromanager? If you think for a-

Kate Kordsmeier:

No, nobody.

Melinda Wittstock:

Nobody does. So if you turn yourself into that person, you’re always going to have a substandard team or you’re going to have turnovers, so it’s not really going to work. So many [inaudible 00:33:48]

Kate Kordsmeier:

Yes, I had to learn a lot of that the hard way.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my God, me too. I look back on myself and I think oh, how did I, and all that stuff. And then you’ve got to turn that off because so much of entrepreneurship is being a scientist in the lab, even with yourself, testing all these hypotheses, but it’s really a journey. It’s not really a destination. So once you actually accept that in your bones, it sort of becomes, like you were talking about freedom, it’s freeing to have that understanding, I suppose. And so what’s going on in your business right now, and where are you taking it? You mentioned a bunch of things that you’re doing; Mastermind, you got the storefront, you got all this kind of things. So what’s your vision and where are you going with it?

Kate Kordsmeier:

That’s such a good question. You’re catching me in a transitional period right now. I don’t know if you’ve experienced this at all, but I feel like my niche was booming during the pandemic, and money was just flowing in so easily and effortlessly, and I was so grateful. But I don’t think I realized that it was partly because so many people were either being laid off or quitting their jobs or even just working from home. So they just had more time and were interested in starting their own businesses. And because I work with other entrepreneurs, I just had such a larger pool flocking to me. And then what’s happened, I think after the last couple of years is I think a lot of those people were like, “Huh, this is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I think I’m going to go back and get a regular job.”

And then of course, now we’re in this sort of like, “Are we in a recession? Are we not? Is it coming, is it not?” And that’s been going on for a year. It’s just ch:anged the marketplace for me at least, so I think I have been in what I’ve been calling playground mode, which is very much like scientist mode, of just, “I’m just experimenting right now and trying to have fun again and enjoy my business and enjoy the freedom that this kind of business creates.”

So with that, we decided to close down a few of the other things that we were doing and open up this digital storefront, which at the time of this recording we’re about a week out from opening. So I’m super excited about that. And I basically just figured out that I had a lot of courses and things I’ve created over the last five years. And some of them we don’t sell anymore, some of them we do still but they’re behind big paywalls. So I’m just piecemealing out a lot of the things that I’ve created into smaller offers where you can just get the one thing and then you can add on from there.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, it’s so interesting. During the pandemic, a lot of tech companies over hired  Because everyone thought, “Oh, right, this is booming. This is the new way.” And then of course people start going out again But all these things have seasons. We go full circle around to where we started with the sort of cyclical thing and whatnot. And it’s true of the economy as well. It’s true of all businesses. Just because a business is booming right now doesn’t mean, even if you’re doing everything right, that it will be a year from now, because there are so many things changing around you.

So just being on top of that all the time and in that sense of flow is so important, but easy to forget. Because I think once you have success and you got your formula and you got your stuff, because it is all going, it’s all ticking on. I’ve seen a lot of people make the mistake of thinking, oh, it’ll always be this way. And of course it never is.

Kate Kordsmeier:

And even like I intellectually understood, that success is not linear, but there’s definitely been some tough moments over the last year where it’s like, “Oh man, I feel like I’m going backwards, or things have changed, or I’m been in this ebb phase for a while. I’m ready to be out of that.” I think what I’ve found in talking to so many successful entrepreneurs too on my podcast as well, is the only secret is just to keep showing up. And those are the people that can, if you can withstand the ebbs and just get through it and you can get creative and you can have fun with it, you will have a successful business. It may not always feel that way, but yeah, I’ve had to recommit to my business many times.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s really interesting, this idea of recommit. It’s like in a relationship, right? Where like, “Is this still working for me? Do  I still want this? What’s the next thing?” And again, it just comes back to the whole theme of this conversation, which is being in the present, being in awareness. So what a lovely conversation. Kate, I want to make sure that people know how to find you, how to work with you, any special offers or anything you have right now that you’d like to share?

Kate Kordsmeier:

I actually have a great cyclical living freebie that I can give your audience. I want to make sure I give you the right link, but I think, let me just double check this here, one sec. Okay, so if you go to katekordsmeier.com/cycle, we’ve got a free cyclical living guide. And it will explain those four phases. It’s the four phases of the menstrual cycle that mirror the four phases of the moon and the four seasons in nature. And in that guide, you’ll be able to see, to understand what’s happening both with the universe and your mood and energy and your hormones, and then what activities you could prioritize both from a work perspective, from self-care perspective, movement. Even our nutritional needs change throughout our cycles. So there’s a lot of goodies in those cycle keys that I’ve created there. And that’s all free.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, how wonderful. And obviously, where’s the best place to find you on social media? We’ll have all these things in the show notes, by the way. So look, if you’re driving while you’re listening to this, don’t drive off the road. Just check the show notes in Podopolo or wherever you like your podcast. But what’s the best place, Kate?

Kate Kordsmeier:

Yeah, I actually am not on social media. I quit social media in 2021. I technically still have a profile on Instagram, but you’ll see in my last post was almost two years ago, and it kind of says, “We’re not here anymore. Come hang out with us where we are, which is over on our podcast and our blog.” So you can find me at Kate Kordsmeier, but I am not really there.

Melinda Wittstock:

I love this. What prompted you to do that and what’s been the impact on your business? You seem to be thriving without the social media addiction. That’s amazing.

Kate Kordsmeier:

Well, I have always hated social media, and it just has always felt like one of those things where I’ve tried everything. I always feel terrible, even if I’ve hired somebody else to do it for me, I never get the results I want. It’s just such a time suck. You’re just constantly on this hamster wheel. And so it was right around Thanksgiving of 2021, and I just thought, “I’m going to just go off of it for 30 days and just see what happens.” And once I did, and I quit cold turkey for everything, not even including personal. I don’t do anything on social. So I just went off for 30 days and everything got better and so I just kept it going. And now, yeah, we’re a year and a half in, and my business has seen a lot of change since then. The program that I was selling at the time grew by over 800% in the first year that I was off social media. So it certainly didn’t negatively impact my business. And I feel so much better.

Melinda Wittstock:

And you’ve saved yourself a lot of time. I’ve found that I’ve just gone off it more and more. Like I’m sort of there and I post my podcast episodes and that thing, but I don’t really engage with it all that often. I find it banal and sort of a waste of time. And then whenever you look at it’s like, “Ugh. I don’t know, what am I actually getting from this?”

Kate Kordsmeier:

I think a lot of people would be surprised how much you really don’t need it at all. And that those little things that you are doing might take up a lot of mental space and bandwidth, but are getting very little results. And just as a fun experiment, just don’t do it for a month and see what happens. And if you have a huge draft or something, it’s like, “Okay, that was working. I can go back to that,” but you might be surprised.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, I love that you’ve doubled down on podcasting. I think there’s a reason it’s the fastest growing media of all time, which is why I’ve built a whole company around it. So Kate, I want to make sure people listen to your podcast too. Is it just called Kate Kordsmeier podcast or what’s the name of it?

Kate Kordsmeier:

It’s called Success with Soul, Success with Soul podcast. You can listen anywhere podcasts are played.

Melinda Wittstock:

Well, I’m going to invite you to join us on Podopolo, because it’s AI powered and socially interactive, funnily enough, but in a meaningful way, where you can engage your community around the podcast. And of course, we’ll add you as a guest. If you’re on Podopolo, Kate, you can take listener questions there or anything if you want to keep the conversation going. But thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Kate Kordsmeier:

Awesome. Thanks for having me.